Issue |
Natures Sciences Sociétés
Volume 14, Number 3, Juillet-Septembre 2006
|
|
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Page(s) | 249 - 256 | |
Section | Article | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/nss:2006037 | |
Published online | 05 October 2006 |
Dossier Engagement public des chercheurs. Nucléaire : de l'engagement "savant" aux contre-expertises associatives
Nuclear energy: from scientist mobilisation to the rise of counter-expertise
Histoire des sciences, Centre Alexandre Koyré – Centre de recherche en
histoire des sciences et des techniques, Muséum national d'histoire
naturelle, CP 25, 57 rue Cuvier, 75231 Paris cedex 05, France
Auteur de correspondance : Sezin.topcu@damesme.cnrs.fr
Jusqu'au milieu des années 1970, l'expertise nucléaire en France est réservée à un cercle réduit d'experts étatiques. La mobilisation, en 1975, de milliers de chercheurs contre le programme électronucléaire fait émerger dans le monde de la recherche la première mise en cause massive du nucléaire civil et de sa gestion. Celle-ci se place au centre de deux basculements majeurs dans les mobilisations face au risque nucléaire des années 1950 aux années 1990. On assiste d'abord au passage de l'engagement des « savants » contre la bombe, dans la période de l'après-guerre, à l'engagement des « scientifiques critiques », dans la période post-Mai 68. On repère ensuite la montée, après l'accident de Tchernobyl, des mobilisations associatives de contre-expertise dans la gestion du risque nucléaire. Nous analyserons le rôle central que joue le milieu des physiciens dans ces transformations dans les rapports entre scientifiques, science, expertise et société au cours des dernières décennies.
Abstract
The management of nuclear energy in France was restricted until the mid 1970's to a small circle of government experts. Within the scientific community criticism against nuclear power mostly targeted nuclear weapons while the sphere of civil nuclear energy remained unchallenged. The launch of the French nuclear programme in 1974 led to the first protest against civil nuclear power and its management within the scientific community. The mobilisation of thousands of researchers against the programme, initially through a petition, the so-called “Appeal of the 400”, then through the creation of an association, the “Group of Scientists for Information on Nuclear Energy (GSIEN)”, beside reflecting a rupture in the relations with science, progress and decision-making processes in the nuclear field, also expressed in the following decades the appropriation of critical knowledge on nuclear risks by the actors of non-governmental organisations. The criticism raised by scientists in 1975 therefore underlies two major shifts between the 1950s to 1990s in collective action vis-à-vis nuclear risk: from the mobilisation of “distinguished scientists” against the atom bomb in the 1950s and 1960s (Joliot, Russell, Einstein, Rostand) to the politicisation of nuclear power by “critical scientists” in the post-May 1968 period (GSIEN) and finally, after the Chernobyl accident, to the rise of associations of counter-expertise on nuclear energy (creation of expert NGOs such as the Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity-CRIIRAD and the Association for the Control of Radioactivity in the West-ACRO). This paper examines the crucial role that the community of physicists has played in transforming the relations between scientists, science, expertise and society.
Mots clés : nucléaire / figures d'engagement des scientifiques / contre-expertise / controverses / formes de mobilisation des savoirs
Key words: nuclear power / scientist commitment / counter-expertise / controversy / forms of knowledge mobilisation
© NSS-Dialogues, EDP Sciences, 2006
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